In recent years, there has been tremendous growth in food preparing and serving establishments which operate somewhat on a short order basis and one of the principal products dispensed by such establishments are hamburgers. These hamburgers are formed by machines so as to be uniform in size and weight and the preferred shape thereof is that of a patty which more or less is of the order of about one half inch in thickness. Said patties are manufactured in large quantieies and in many instances are formed by automatic machines from a supply of ground meat. The patties are suitably molded to have uniform diameter as well as uniform thickness. These patties then are frozen to facilitate the handling and storage thereof and, individual patties are usually separated by thin sheets of suitable paper and are then packaged either in elogated cylindrical plastic bags or in cartons and then are maintained in frozen condition until the patties are to be cooked and served to the purchasing public.
The packaging of such patties into either cartons or elongated tubular bags heretofore has very largely been of a manual nature but due to salaries required by individuals to undertake such packaging, manual filling of the bags or cartons is a costly operation. Further, in view of the ever increasing consumption of hamburgers of the type referred to, certain food preparing establishments have been established solely for the purpose of packaging such hamburger patties and maintaining the same in frozen condition until delivered to establishments which cook the same and otherwise prepare them in the form of sandwiches and otherwise.
Quite recently, the placing of food products in bags and then evacuating the same has inspired the development of certain machines of which U.S. Pat. No. 3,648,740, in the name of Pruitt, dated Mar. 14, 1972, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,796,020, in the name of Anderson et al, dated Mar. 12, 1974, are representative of relatively current development in the food packaging industry. Neither of the patents referred to specifically show or contemplate means for packaging a stack of hamburger patties and the food products respectively illustrated in said patents comprise fowl and hams. Said machines however include vacuum arrangements for evacuating the package after the food product is enclosed within a plastic bag and considerable manual manipulation, especially in arranging the open end of the bag for evacuation, is required.
The present inventor also has developed certain automatic machines capable of feeding a series of patties sequentially by conveyors to deposit the same in stacked relationship within a flexible plastic bag. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,849,969, in the name of Paules, dated Nov. 26, 1974, and 3,959,951, in the name of Paules, dated June 1, 1976 pertain to machines to perform the aforementioned feeding and stacking automatically. These patents also include the feature of inserting sheets of paper between individual patties so that even in frozen condition, they are more readily separable from each other. The machines comprising said inventions includehand-operated evacuating means for the bags after being filled with a full complement of hamburg patties, and they also contemplate using hand operated means for clipping the upper end of the bags after evacuation. The machines of these patents, however, are a step forward in the marketing of frozen hamburg patties in that they are a vast improvement over solely manual operation in filling bags and cartons with such patties. Therefore, it is the principle purpose of the present invention to provide means which, with only a minor exception, are completely automatic and handle the bagged patties produced, for example, by either of the aforementioned machines in applicant's prior patents to effect evacuation of the bagged patties, automatically clipping the upper ends thereof closed, heat shrinking the bags when formed from heat shrinkable plastic material, automatically placing the evacuated and sealed bags in spaces therefor in a carton, which spaces are arranged by indexing means so as to receive and pack said bags of patties in orderly fashion to consume a minimum of space within the carton.